The trend is clear. Linux is surging in popularity more than at any point in its history. I believe this increase in adoption has increased for a few reasons. For one, the progress made by developers of the various Linux distributions. Distros like Fedora and more recently Ubuntu have seen astronomical advances in terms of making Linux more user-friendly so that someone without any unix-related experience can easily use the operating system. Secondly, cost. Most Linux distributions have been and will continue to be free (or will offer some sort of free version). In a severe economic recession like that one we’re facing now, many companies, educational and government institutions, and individuals are more likely to try Linux as an alternative to the higher priced Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Certainly for businesses looking to cut costs this is a very appealing option.

So, I tip my cap to you Linux. I have loved you since you helped me blaze through my Intro to C++ class back in 2002. And I wish you nothing but continued success!

Sling Media has already developed SlingPlayer for platforms like Windows Mobile and Blackberry, and there has been a lot of anticipation around an iPhone offering. That said, there was also some that were worried about developing SlingPlayer for the iPhone, given Apple’s notoriously strict App Store acceptance policies, often without rhyme or reason.

A few days ago Sling Media submitted their SlingPlayer for iPhone application to Apple for review and acceptance in the App Store. This again stirred up the debate about whether or not the device would be approved by Apple, and alas the hour of reckoning has come and SlingPlayer for iPhone has been rejected (for now). According to Sling Media PR, the program was developed to specifically adhere to every Apple guideline for applications, user interfaces, etc. This leads to the obligatory WTF?

According to sources at BGR, SlingPlayer for iPhone was rejected entry into the App Store due to an executive decision made by Apple. Word circulating the Internets is that AT&T petitioned Apple to reject the app due to worries about bandwidth consumption . If true — and BGR is notorious for having accurate inside information — I have bugs to pick with both AT&T and Apple regarding this action taken by AT&T.

For one, there are already a number of other AT&T Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices on which users are able to use the SlingPlayer application. So their argument about bandwidth is pitiful, they’re already letting users of other devices use it. Granted, the number of iPhones in comparison to those other devices is astronomical, but there’s got to be some law or regulation against restricting the bandwidth of the same program on different platforms when both utilize the same network — at a minimum it’s horribly unethical.

Secondly, Apple. When did you start letting telco’s dictate what software can and can’t be allowed on the iPhone. Apart from allowing VOIP apps to run on cell networks (which is a legitimate excuse) and other apps that may interfere with AT&T’s revenue model, there is no excuse for this. AT&T says it’s gonna use too much bandwidth? Puh-lease! There are a number of streaming video apps already on the iPhone that AT&T didn’t bark about: Joost and UStream to name a few. Also, what is the point of offering users unlimited data plans if you’re going to restrict how much data they can use - and not just restrict it by capping it, but even going so far as to not allowing software that may use a lot of bandwidth. It’s total crap and my affection for AT&T continues to dwindle, they probably have a competing product in the works and the bandwidth complaints are just a cover. And Apple, shame on you as well for allowing a telecommunications provider to control innovation on the iPhone. Continued behavior like this will allow platforms like the Palm Pre and Android to catch up to you.

</rant>, users…thoughts on this?

A few weeks later they arrived in the mail and I began to dive into iPhone programming. I recall big Steve saying back in the day that for anyone wanting to program on the Mac (and thereby iPhone since it runs Mac OS X) they ought to learn Objective-C, as that is the main language that Mac applications are written in. So I started off with the Objective-C book, reading the first hundred pages or so.

Most of the high-level concepts of the language are very similar to what I already know. My first real programming class (html doesn’t count) was back in the fall semester of 2002 at community college in California, an Introduction to C++ class. At the time I loved that class, I was using Red Hat 7 and writing everything in EMACS and compiling via the command line with gcc. It was great and I had serious aspirations about being a computer science major. Alas, the advanced mathematics requirements and me didn’t mesh well so that was the end of my computer science experience in college. After college I was heavily involved with a friend’s nightlife web site called Partybody and over the course of 6 months to a year taught myself PHP. Over the past few years since then I have become fairly knowledgeable in PHP and have started branching out into other languages like Python and Ruby. The reason I mention all this is because in my experiences with Objective-C so far, the fundamentals seem to be pretty similar (variables, loops, function, etc.), albeit the syntax is a bit different, which is where the real learning curve comes into play.

Despite using a completely new language, I’m utterly thrilled at the amount of progress I’ve been able to make so far in the little time I’ve had to devote to iPhone programming. Apple’s IDE Xcode is shaping up to be the best programming tool I’ve ever used — which says a lot because I absolutely love Coda. Fact is the CodeSense built into Xcode is phenomenal!

Additionally, I must say thank you to Stephan Kochan, author of Objective-C 2.0, and Dave Mark & Jeff LaMarche, authors of Beginning iPhone Development, their two books are very easy to follow and unlike most programming books I read, they’re actually teaching me something!

As I said before I read about 100 pages in the Objective-C book before switching over to the Beginning iPhone Development book, of which I am currently on Chapter 8. But already I have been using Xcode and Interface Builder extensively, and Apple’s iPhone Simulator software is truly remarkable.

After only a few hours of programming I’m starting to churn out real-world type applications that I feel I can later reuse the code base into developing my own apps to submit to the app store. I haven’t had this much fun developing in ages!

Now if only I just had some more free time to code….I can’t wait to see the results.

As a reminder, Apple’s push notification service comes in lieu of true background running applications, which the company says chew up far too much battery life to be resourceful. They claim that companies such as RIM and Microsoft that feature true background applications are sacrificing as much as 80% of idle battery time, whereas the push notification service will only consume 23% idle battery time.

Under the push notification service umbrella, third party applications on the iPhone will be able to listen for data on a network channel capable of sending and receiving messages even after the applications have been closed. This allows resources to be freed up while still having the ability to receive incoming data transmissions. For example, if I signed onto AIM but closed the application, AIM would cease running in active memory on the iPhone, but I would still be notified of any instant messages I received via the push notification service.

In the email sent out to developers, Apple instructed users to log in to the iPhone Dev Center and download the push notification programming guide and getting started video.

A new screenshot shown here courtesy of MacRumors provides conclusive evidence that the next iPhone will indeed offer video recording capabilities:

The Camera app in the iPhone will provide a similar look and feel, but will feature a switch on the bottom right to allow the user to toggle between photographs and videos. Other stuff found by developers in config files are auto-focus camera capabilities, voice control, and a digital compass (magnetometer).

Video capabilities, voice control and the auto-focus camera aren’t really anything revolutionary, as these features have long been available on other cell phones. What sounds interesting to me is the inclusion of a digital compass. A digital compass can determine absolute position values, something the current built-in accelerometers are unable to do. An example of utilizing the magnetometer would be pointing your iPhone’s camera at a building and having the phone tell you what it is by combining information from the digital compass, GPS, and accelerometer. Another example would be pointing your iPhone towards the night sky and having it tell you what stars and constellations you’re looking at.

Indeed, the future of the iPhone looks beautiful.

As someone who is just beginning to poke my nose into Objective-C and iPhone development this is a godsend. Sure, the books from Borders or Amazon are great, but for me personally nothing beats having an instructor, and I am very eager to start watching the videos.

The first video and PDF was posted to iTunes last Friday (April 3rd) and as mentioned above is available as a free download. Here is the direct link to Stanford’s iTunes U page (link opens in iTunes).

Currently, the iPhone OS ships with built-in read-only capabilities for Microsoft Office documents. Users attempting to make changes to Word, Excel, etc. files have had little options.

I’m curious to know exactly what types of updates these users are looking to make? In my experience, most of the users who access Office documents on the go simply view them quickly to get the information they need then later open the files on a computer to edit them and do the real work. I simply can’t imagine doing a vlookup() or countif() on my iPhone — don’t even get me started on pivot tables.

The point is it’s simply not practical for getting any real work done. Sure Microsoft will sell plenty of copies because of the novelty generated if they’re actually able to deliver on this. But as someone who spends most of my time in Microsoft Office from Monday to Friday, I can’t see how Office on the iPhone will realistically make me better equipped to do my job.

According to Matt Ogle, one of Last.fm’s developers, the reasoning is that CBS Interactive’s (Last.fm’s parent if you recall they purchased the site back in 2007) salesforce is primarily geared toward an ad-supported model in the three aforementioned countries where Last.fm radio will remain free. In the other markets the potential for ad revenue is significantly weaker, thus CBS Interactive feels that a subscription model is necessary to provide sustainable growth.

Personally I’m shocked by this. I don’t know how you can take such a wonderful service as Last.fm that has been free since its earliest days back in 2002 and all of a sudden start charging a monthly service fee. This is without a doubt going to piss off A LOT of users. And nowadays there is competition aplenty is the online music space, particularly this online music niche *cough* Pandora *cough*. I hope the suits at CBS Interactive are wiser than the masses on this one because I really love Last.fm as a service and use it on an almost daily basis. And although this won’t affect me daily as I’m located in the US, my geek-heart goes out to everyone in the affected geographies, this is truly bollocks!

According to BGR, the new iPhone will be faster than previous iPhone hardware — see my post from last week about the next iPhone supporting faster 3G — and will come with AT&T’s U-Verse software (which integrates control of other personal electronics such as your DVR, etc.). Of course it will ship with the new iPhone 3.0 software that was demoed last week.

Also rumored to be confirmed is a $99 3G netbook that will NOT run any Windows OS. Linux…or maybe Mac OS X?

As Carin and I started to plan for our wedding we knew from the start that we’d need a tool to track everything: guestlist, invitations, budgets, etc., the list goes on and on for a wedding. Initially, we started out by using Microsoft Excel. We both use it pretty frequently at our day jobs and it seemed like the logical place to start keeping track of everything.

Excel worked fine for a few weeks, we started to manage our guestlist, starting off with about 4 fields of info per person, then finding ourselves adding new fields on a regular basis. We also started to keep track of expenses, which anyone who knows Excel reasonably well knows it is fabulous for working with numbers. Everything was working out OK until it came time to send out Save The Date notices to our potential guests. We quickly realized that the way we had been managing contacts, although useful for informational purposes, was useless when it came to taking action on the information such as compiling mailers, being able to track responses by type (yes, no, maybe). It finally hit us that we need something that was geared specifically to manage weddings. So I did what most people would do nowadays, consulted the Google.

After a bit of searching and reading through reviews of what other couples had gone through I settled on a program called iDo Wedding Couple Edition (there is also a professional version available for wedding planners at a significantly greater cost). I didn’t know what to expect from it and I wasn’t going to pay $30 for a license to use something I’d never tried before, so I took to Bit Torrent and stumbled upon a copy of it.

Once I got the software and installed it I was instantly amazed at how much easier it was to do everything in this program as opposed to Excel. Whereas in Excel Carin and I were constantly having to think of new ways to handle our wedding planning demands, it’s evident that the iDo developers have clearly thought through every last intricate detail of a wedding and have built a way to manage it into the software.

Some of the functionality built into the programs is the following:

• Contacts - manage your guestlist
• Invitations - manage invitations and the contacts they’re sent to
• RSVPs - track responses from returned invitations
• Attendees - gather additional information about people who will be attending your wedding: flight info, hotel info, seating chart, etc.
• Gifts - keep track of who got you what when it comes time to send thank yous
• Checklist - pre-loaded with 100 wedding related tasks, ability to customize as desired
• Budget - manage and track all wedding related expenses
• Vendors - keep vendor information organized to ensure wedding logistics are handled smoothly
• Events - manage anything related to your wedding (bridal party, etc.)
• Timelines - your detailed wedding itinerary
• Widgets - extra add-ons to assist in wedding planning
• Reports and Labels - every section of iDo has a printable report (over 100 reports can be generated) and it will also print labels for your contacts

It’s pretty amazing all the functionality they’ve built into a single program. It really is a one-size-fits-all wedding planning application. We loved it so much that after the first use we went to the company’s Web site and purchased a license.

To end this post, here are some screen shots of the aforementioned features of the iDo Wedding Couple Edition.